To meet a goal set by the US Environmental Protection Agencys Renewable Fuels Standard to use 36 billion gallons of biofuels each year—mostly ethanol—the nation must expand its infrastructure for transporting and storing ...

Policymakers need to rethink the idea of promoting biofuels to protect the climate because the methods used to justify such policies are inherently flawed, according to a University of Michigan energy researcher.

Introducing four genes from bacteria and spinach has enabled researchers at the Delft University of Technology to improve the production of bioethanol with yeast by using carbon dioxide. Their findings were published last ...

(Phys.org) —Two teams working independently of each other have developed very similar methods for creating silver nanoparticles that appear impervious to rust. One of the teams was from the U.S. and published their results ...

Blue-green in colour, slimy and present in seas and fresh water worldwide - the presence of microalgae is not generally met with great excitement. But this may be about to change. A team of European scientists is on a mission ...

Remember switchgrass? In his State of the Union address in 2006, President George W. Bush suggested scientists use switchgrass to produce an ecologically friendly fuel. Cellulosic ethanol, he called it, produced from natural ...

A significant portion of the petroleum consumed by the transport sector must be replaced in the long term by renewable energy. Therefore, it is of the utmost economic and ecological importance to optimise the production of ...

"Energy cane" may sound like a trendy sports drink, but it actually is among a new generation of energy crops that could yield up to 5 times more ethanol per acre than corn. They are the topic of the cover story in this week's ...

(Phys.org) —The latest in a series of experiments testing the ability of robots to influence live animals shows that bio-inspired robots can not only elicit fear in zebrafish, but that this reaction can be modulated by ...

Ethanol from corn and other plants could become the sustainable, raw material for a huge variety of products, from plastic packaging to detergents to synthetic rubber, that are currently petroleum-based. This was the conclusion ...

Ethanol

Ethanol, also called ethyl alcohol, pure alcohol, grain alcohol, or drinking alcohol, is a volatile, flammable, colorless liquid. It is a psychoactive drug, best known as the type of alcohol found in alcoholic beverages and in modern thermometers. Ethanol is one of the oldest recreational drugs. In common usage, it is often referred to simply as alcohol or spirits.

Ethanol is a straight-chain alcohol, and its molecular formula is C2H5OH. Its empirical formula is C2H6O. An alternative notation is CH3-CH2-OH, which indicates that the carbon of a methyl group (CH3-) is attached to the carbon of a methylene group (-CH2-), which is attached to the oxygen of a hydroxyl group (-OH). It is a constitutional isomer of dimethyl ether. Ethanol is often abbreviated as EtOH, using the common organic chemistry notation of representing the ethyl group (C2H5) with Et.

The fermentation of sugar into ethanol is one of the earliest organic reactions employed by humanity. The intoxicating effects of ethanol consumption have been known since ancient times. In modern times, ethanol intended for industrial use is also produced from by-products of petroleum refining.

Ethanol has widespread use as a solvent of substances intended for human contact or consumption, including scents, flavorings, colorings, and medicines. In chemistry, it is both an essential solvent and a feedstock for the synthesis of other products. It has a long history as a fuel for heat and light and also as a fuel for internal combustion engines.